


dead ideas and lifeless old beliefs

by Anonymous



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen, set in some alternate universe future where Trystane and Myrcella get married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 10:37:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20113744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Jaime and Arianne discuss the past in a palace filled with ghosts.





	dead ideas and lifeless old beliefs

**Author's Note:**

> Imagine some strange semi-alternate universe in which the wedding between Myrcella and Trystane actually happens and Doran looped Arianne into whatever he was planning earlier so she was more secure about her own position.

Dorne was full of ghosts.

From the second he’d stepped foot into Sunspear, it was as if the dead had risen to surround him, to condemn him. A flash of dark hair, the trace of an accent, the pitch of a laugh – this had been Ser Arthur’s homeland and Princess Elia’s, and everywhere he looked, he could see them and little Rhaenys, too, the Targaryen that looked like a Martell that he hadn’t protected.

He shouldn’t be there.

He had no right to be there.

Dorne was as full of wine as ghosts, and Dornish weddings even more so. That was the only thing keeping him from breaking down now, in this hellish castle surrounded by Martells and Daynes alike. He drained his cup, reaching to pour himself another and nearly jumping out of his skin instead when a hand brushed against his elbow. “Enjoying yourself?”

He looked up and froze. The heat must have finally gotten to him, because he was hallucinating, or maybe delirious.

He had to be.

Princess Elia was dead, long dead, so long that he sometimes had trouble remembering what she’d looked like alive. Now, when he tried to recall her, it wasn’t a slow smile and expressive hands he saw but empty eyes and a broken, bloody body. But here she stood, no older than she’d been when her corpse had been laid in front of the Iron Throne alongside those of her children, and he wondered how he could have ever forgotten her face.

He blinked hard.

No. Not Elia.

This woman’s nose was longer, lips fuller, dark hair loose around her face with no locks wound into braids or pinned back. She was voluptuous where Elia had always been painfully slender, glowing with health where stress and illness had often rendered Elia haggard and ashen. This wasn’t Elia, but the resemblance was striking all the same. Elia as she could have been in a different life, a happier life, a life away from the den of dragons.

“Princess Arianne,” Jaime said. The woman smiled prettily and inclined her head. That, too, was unlike Elia. Elia’s smile had always been warm, soft. Her niece’s was sharper, all teeth and gleaming eyes.

“Ser Jaime. How’s the wine?”

Jaime looked down at his empty cup.

“Good enough to have some more,” he said, refilling the cup and taking another drink. His pulse slowed. He hadn’t even realized it had risen. But this wasn’t Elia and there was no need to panic. It wasn’t Arianne whose dead eyes followed him in nightmares. It wasn’t Arianne he’d failed.

“Have you met my brother?” she asked sweetly, and the memory of Elia came slamming back into him. Not the voice, but the cadence, the tone – that was all Elia at her most dangerous. Silk hiding steel. Gentle Elia, kind Elia, fiercely intelligent and capable Elia. Jaime swallowed hard.

“Prince Trystane?” he managed, voice hoarse. “Briefly.”

Arianne took his arm. “Come, come, let me introduce you. It wouldn’t do to not meet the groom at his wedding!”

Elia had taken his arm before, sometimes, when she’d needed someone to lean on to get back to her chambers. It had put her close enough for him to smell the perfume upon her skin. On the days when she’d had to attend to Aerys, it had been scented with oranges – a little reminder of Sunspear, she’d said. Arianne, holding onto him now, wore something similar.

_Not Elia, _Jaime reminded himself. No, Arianne wasn’t putting any weight on him. Elia had barely weighed anything, but she’d only taken his arm when she was exhausted or in pain and leaned against him heavily when she had. Arianne was gliding easily beside him. She was guiding him while Elia had just used him for support. Her orange perfume wasn’t out of place in Sunspear as Elia’s had been in King’s Landing. _Arianne, not Elia._

“My cousin is named Elia, did you know?” the princess said. “I’d introduce you, but I’m not quite sure where she went off to. My uncle named her after his sister. You knew _her_, of course.”

Jaime could only nod.

Arianne was a decade younger than him and tiny, but with her daggerlike words and poise and the same sharp gaze that everyone in her family had, it was as if he were the seventeen year old left alone to protect the royal family all over again. He stared at her in silence, waiting for her judgement. He didn’t have to wait long.

“My father and uncle both adored their sister,” she said. “And my cousin…well, she was my uncle’s first daughter after my aunt’s death. And it was so shortly after. There was no better name.”

Jaime had to wonder what she was angling at. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her, but she alternated between fixing her own on him and gazing off into the distance, at something he couldn’t see.

“Elia of Dorne,” Arianne mused. “A good name. I thought once that we would demand a match between her and your…sister’s eldest.”

Her pause lasted just long enough to make it clear it had been intentional. Jaime stiffened, but Arianne’s fingers tightened on his arm, digging into his skin, and she continued before he could react aloud. “House Martell is certainly owed an Elia of Dorne as queen, don’t you think?”

Jaime found his voice. “A bastard is not a Martell.”

Arianne raised her eyebrows at him. “She’s as good as. Alas!”

She tossed her hair back, smacking Jaime in the face in the process. She didn’t apologize. “We Martells learn from the past.”

“Oh? And what have you learned?” he asked, and even though he hadn’t said it mockingly, it seemed _that _would be what provoked Arianne’s ire, because her lustrous dark eyes narrowed.

“What we’ve _learned_,” she said, taut and tart, “is that we will never send another of ours to King’s Landing alone. Not when your people do such a dismal job at caring for them.”

It took everything in him to not look away from her. The guilt continued to bubble within him. And Arianne kept going. “My uncle ensured my cousins had all the tools they needed to rid themselves of anyone unworthy. But that’s difficult when surrounded, wouldn’t you say? Everything just…slips out of control.”

He should bristle. There should be anger sparking in his belly, defensiveness tightening his muscles, but no – all he could feel was the endless, crushing guilt.

“_You _have no reason to be afraid, though,” Arianne added. “This is a more civilized part of the world, I’m pleased to inform you. Anyone entrusted to _us _will always be safe.”

A bold promise in a world where so few could be ensured. A pointed one designed just for him.

He should say something.

He couldn’t.

Arianne’s broken glass smile gentled as they reached her younger brother and his golden haired bride. “Ah! Here we are. Trystane, may I introduce Ser Jaime, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard? Myrcella, sweetling, why don’t I take you to meet some friends of mine?”

Arianne and Myrcella were gone in swirls of silk, leaving Jaime with the young prince, alone in the crowd. He took a bracing breath and made a valiant attempt at his usual lazy grin. “Enjoying your wedding?”

Trystane’s eyes were the same shape and colour as his sister and aunt’s, just as sharply intelligent, but they lacked the intensity. His gaze didn’t feel like a condemnation. So Jaime sat down beside him in this land of vipers and spoke. As he did, his heart stopped thrumming so fast and the weight on his chest eased a little and he could even begin to laugh and joke with his daughter-niece’s husband in this land of wraiths for quite a while until he made the mistake of glancing across the room to where Arianne and Myrcella stood with a dark haired woman clad in lilac and nearly froze once more.

His reaction this time was less intense than when he’d first seen Arianne, even though from a distance, Allyria Dayne’s resemblance to her older siblings was more pronounced than Arianne’s to Elia. Allyria looked more like Ashara than Arthur, and he’d barely known Ashara. But his smile died all the same, and even as he continued his conversation with Trystane, his eyes kept drifting back to the two Dornishwomen, dancing together, his mind to the two others that had done the same two decades before.

Arianne was not Elia. Allyria was not Ashara. From a distance, that knowledge didn’t matter.

The ghosts danced on.


End file.
